Back to work

A meeting: ink in small Moleskine notebook

Today was my first day back in the office after a 2 1/2 week vacation. The first thing on the agenda was a community meeting and anniversary celebration lunch, a very nice event, except for the 150 emails and voicemails awaiting my attention. This is a composite sketch I made during the meeting of people sitting at different tables. I drew directly in ink and was focused on drawing quickly and seeing shapes and angles and negative space and how it all fit together, rather than trying to get a perfect likeness of any one person, which is a good thing, because I didn’t.

I’m fortunate to work with a group of amazing, dedicated people who are doing really important work to improve adolescent literacy. I talked to my co-workers and my boss today about the idea of my working 3.5 days a week in order to focus more time on art. Everyone was supportive of my giving it a try. I’ll work from home half a day Monday and be in the office Tuesday through Thursday. I’m glad my workweek is only two days this week. I’m still a bit on vacation time and it seems absurd to spend all day in one spot working at the computer in an office, even if it’s a nice one.